


Someone

by Diminua



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Human AU, M/M, ish - they arranged it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:19:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28394505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diminua/pseuds/Diminua
Summary: This was a kinkmeme prompt and as usual I can't do better than to paraphrase the OP :Aziraphale is a frumpy, middle aged man, who's closing in on 50 : he's spent his entire life alone, mistreated by his family, and living like a modern times hermit in his familiar, reassuring bookshop. He thinks it's too late for passion. But he hopes that, maybe, he could find a companion for his latter days.Crowley has spent his entire life having a wild time: parties, sex, rock n roll, all that jazz. He flew through the 80s, the 90s, the new millennium like a car on fire. He thought he had time, thought he'd be young and surrounded by people forever, thought with fling after fling after fling, someone would find him. Someone would look at him and choose him. But no one ever did.To paraphrase (again) - they turn to an arranged marriage company. And they fit..
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 83
Kudos: 175
Collections: Good Omens Kink Meme





	1. Somewhere More Important

London is a funny place. Sometimes an old lane, the entrance to which you might have walked past a hundred times on your way somewhere more important, will press itself upon your attention. Will catch your eye on this day and no other - maybe for as little reason as a lick of paint on a façade, or a stray sunbeam, or another person turning in where you never realised turning in was an option.

Or perhaps just your own unsettled state of mind, after the thousandth coffee-and-cake you’ve had by yourself in the pleasant surroundings of St Paul’s Churchyard, watching tourists go by in twos and three and fours, calling to one another like birds, juggling lattes and scattering pigeons.

Alone (as always) with a book and a delicious slice of sachertorte, and no one at the other side of the table to glance up so you can say.. well anything, actually. A particularly pithy quote that seems worth sharing, an invitation to try a nibble of one’s cake, an observation of how nice it is to sit out here now, with no cars going past.

Aziraphale used to like the peace and quiet. Exploring London on foot had been a big adventure when he’d got here, walking in the footsteps of Johnson and Pepys and Woolf, armed with an AtoZ and G E Mitton, without anyone discouraging, needling, mocking him.

The peace itself was enough.

Settling into his own company, finding out who he was without his family pulling every which way, as though Aziraphale were a piece of plasticine wilfully refusing to take the right shape.

No more hearty too-hard pats on the back, no more being dragged along to football matches designed purely to humiliate him. No pressure to make the same thing of his life everyone else had – money, wife, children, showoffy car and even more showoffy house.

Not that there was anything wrong with those things of course, if you liked them. Aziraphale is prone to a bit of accumulation himself. But only of things he wants, not things he’s acquired to impress the neighbours and because he’s ‘meant’ to want them. Like those little pink plastic pieces in the Game of Life a neighbour had as a child, that have to go around the board collecting the same things each time, without ever having the option to turn one down, or consider what they themselves might want.

Still, there are things he wants that he doesn’t have. Things he now knows he never made himself available for whilst he was enjoying not having to be what he wasn’t. Letting himself be – if not happy, at least happy enough. Content. Untroubled.

Lately though he's wondered what it might have been like to have been a bit troubled, from time to time. Or even just once.

Maudlin thoughts, he’d realised, as he'd taken the last sip of coffee and dabbed delicately at his lips with a paper napkin, resolving to shake the feeling with this little wander around Ludgate. An interesting area. It reminds him of _My American_ by Stella Gibbons. Not one of her finest works perhaps, but very evocative of a certain period.

Perhaps it’s that subconscious thought that has him wandering up alleyways he’s never been to, all closed up and dark-windowed at the weekend of course.

Funny how quickly one can step off of the tourist trail and suddenly find oneself in a London of small closed offices, stationers and sandwich shops.

Funny, too, how you can live in a city 20 years and not know parts of it are there. Like this grey-painted façade of what must have been an old fashioned butcher's once, Still a few tiles of fat pigs and big-bellied geese intact, and a recessed door with the name of some long-forgotten butcher in black and white tessellation on the floor. _Arlidge and daughter._ Rather nice that, and unusual.

Aziraphale steps into the recess, the better to see if there’s anything else interesting, but there isn’t really. A second door, the mirror of the shop one but of much sturdier construction, and a set of three buzzers – probably offices rather than flats – and at the back one of those wire racks for newspapers that someone has stuffed a lot of leaflets in – glossy things for the same dating agency, Let’sBHonest.*

If it _is_ a dating agency. Aziraphale teases a leaflet out from amongst the others, struck by the first few lines he can see:

**Are you after real companionship?**

****Tired of being offered the moon and stars?** **

****

**Want to get off that pedestal or out of that rut?**

**We can help.**

The rest is more densely written and less dramatic:

_Let’s face it, Romance isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sometimes the more opportunity there is the harder it is to filter out the nonsense. Romance, true love, happy ever after? Let’s get real._

__

__

_Most of us don’t expect sobbing violins or grand gestures. We just want a good friend to share the rest of our lives._

It’s perfectly true, Aziraphale thinks. Romance, roses, those are for other people. He just wants someone to share his days with. A coffee, a smile, the sunshine.

_Mr Right doesn’t have to be Mr Perfect. Stop waiting. Make an appointment today. Just complete the few short questions overleaf, seal and return to us at the address below. No envelope or stamp needed._

Aziraphale turns the leaflet over. There are in fact about twenty questions, the first of which are name and telephone number – presumably so that a company representative can call to set up the aforementioned appointment.

He’s not so sure about that to be honest – he’s had his fair share of marketing calls and junk mail over the years, and although the leaflet appears to be speaking directly to him that’s no guarantee they can really help. Still he folds it up and puts it in his coat pocket before he can overthink it. No obligation, as they say. It’s not like they’re asking for money upfront.

*The spelling annoys him but at least they know how to use an apostrophe.


	2. Stop Bloody Whining

OK, Crowley thinks. Laptop, Espresso. Research this and stop bloody whining. You’ve still – mostly – got your looks. Be grateful.  
  
Dating agency? Eeurgh. He hates those ads. They always seem so floral and unrealistic. Anyway it’s just more of the same isn’t it? High expectations and a let down later, probably.  
  
Thing is, Crowley doesn’t really know where he went wrong in the first place.  
  
Well, alright, some of it he does. He knows he made at least one poor sod feel like Crowley was trying to buy him with restaurant dinners and trips to Spain and other stuff Crowley couldn’t really afford at the time but wanted.. what? To lavish on a guy who decided it was too much, in the end. Who couldn’t reciprocate except with sex, even though Crowley never meant it that way, and freaked out.  
  
He could’ve bloody said something at the time though. It’s alright for Sharik to laugh about it now. Crowley can only pretend to laugh.  
  
Didn’t even do a very good job of that, judging from the way Shar suddenly pulled himself up and insisted. ‘It wasn’t you, you know, Crowley. I was just young.’  
  
Yeah, Crowley had thought, except it is me, it must be. Because I’m the one who’s alone, so I’m the one who must’ve done something wrong, right? Too clingy, too fast, too.. too something. Why would Shar even tell him if it wasn’t meant to be a hint?  
  
Maybe clubbing was never the way, picking someone up for a casual thing and trying to turn it into something more serious.  
  
How do you even ask someone out in a neutral setting though? Crowley never learnt that skill, never needed it. He’d been young and fit and it had always been so, so easy when you both knew what you were after. Still is on a good day. But he’s tired of it now, with all the old crowd gone, and it never going anywhere except to wonder why no one chooses him for long.  
  
Crowley’s sure there must be people out there where it works right. Where they have a fling and find they want to see each other again, nurture that spark somehow (homemade breakfasts, exchanges of front door keys and flurries of text messages) - and then the shared flat, the pet dog or cat maybe, the argument over wallpaper versus paint, carpet or laminate, a trip to some bloody awful furniture showroom where you queue until the end of recorded time, but it doesn’t matter because it’s yours and you’re choosing together.  
  
Eeurgh. Not cool Crowley, _not_ cool. But he’s kind of done with being cool. He’s just on forty-fucking-eight and being cool is all bollocks anyway. He’s put way too much time into being cool and not enough into being.. well, domestic. If he’d done it all different to start with..  
  
OK, now he’s gone full circle. Pity’s sake, Crowley, get on with the research, yeah?  
  
Right, ok, this one doesn’t look too bad. There’s quite a few questions and he’s not sure he wants to have an interview but he kind of likes the way they’re selling it.  
  
Question one is about physical affection. Cuddling. Kisses. Big yes to both of those, but mostly the cuddling. Daily, ideally. Not cool, no, but who is he kidding right now? There’s only himself and the plants here, and they know better than to judge.  
  
Question 2. Minimum sexual activity.  
  
Actually – and it’s a surprise – Crowley thinks he could probably do without that. It’s not like he hasn’t had more than his fair share, and given the option of a daily shag with a relative stranger and someone to cuddle up to, someone who wants to cuddle Crowley despite all the pointed and prickly bits, it’s cuddles every time.  
  
Which. Is. Embarrassing. OK then, moving on.  
  
3) Tidiness. Crowley looks round his flat. Well, it is tidy. He’s always kept a tidy space, so he guesses that might be important?  
  
Mind you (he thinks, finger hovering over the mouse button) he does share an office with probably the untidiest person on the planet. Someone who would be breeding maggots and mould if Crowley and the cleaners didn’t sometimes chuck their half eaten sandwiches and steep their coffee cups in bleach for them, despite the sign in the kitchen that makes it very clear this is not their job (the cleaners, that is, no-one cares what Crowley does).  
  
So maybe not that important, when it comes down to it.  
  
He’ll be drawing a line at maggots though. You’ve got to draw a line somewhere.  
  
4) Money. Spent, mostly. He’s still working, will probably be working to 70, and by then will have just about paid off the mortgage on this stupidly expensive flat that never used to echo like it does (didn’t the grey walls used to look slick, the perfect foil for his indoor garden? Now they just look empty, full of gaps). He’s well paid but it goes. Clothes, stereo systems, watches, drinks, cabs home, whatever. He’s got a few pieces of very nice art – carefully curated to fit the flat of course – and there’s the Bentley, but you can’t measure the Bentley in money.  
  
He’ll probably sell all the rest when he gets to retirement, free up the cash and get something smaller and a bit further out with a proper garden. Fruit trees maybe. It’d be nice to have someone else there. He could cook for them. Sunday lunch with homegrown veg. Peas and baby carrots and roast potatoes. Apple crumble for afters, if they’re a pudding person (Crowley is not a pudding person).  
  
Maybe he should put that in the space left for extra comments: ‘must let me feed them sometimes’. Or is that too weird?  
  
Yeah, probably a bit weird. He sticks it in anyway.

Over on Old Compton Street Aziraphale is having a similar sort of problem with the 'holidays' question. The truth is he doesn’t think of himself as a person who ‘holidays’ as such, although there’s often a month in the spring that he likes to spend book buying, taking a leisurely route towards the Amalfi by train, zigzagging from city to city, staying at familiar hotels and enjoying glasses of good wine and plates of good food, with just the odd detour to places he’s read about.  
  
So the question had seemed rather exciting at first. He’d quite perked up, thinking about how he’d like to show this hypothetical someone Paris, in particular, or Urbino. But of course (as he’d made a point to remind himself, deflating as quickly as he'd become enthused) they might not be interested. Particularly not if they have to spend their time listening to him monologuing about Dumas or the art of flânerie.  
  
Aziraphale would happily pay for the trip of course – that’s not in question – but he doesn’t want it to mean he dictates what they do. Like some dreadful mid-Victorian husband keeping a tight hand on the purse strings and forcing his trophy wife to trail along behind him while he talks for hours about Carlo Levi.  
  
On the other hand the instructions at the top of the page do stress the importance of being honest, which is how they get their match, after all, and Aziraphale had been honest about the relocation question (in brief: No). He just feels he’s being a bit – rigid. Not that he wants to go hang-gliding in the Maldives or anything, but if the other person really wanted to he’d - stand close by at least. Fret in an encouraging fashion.  
  
Goodness, he’s just being silly now isn't he? Anyway he's halfway through and that’s far enough for tonight. He’ll finish the rotten thing tomorrow. The post doesn’t go until three in the afternoon anyway.


	3. A Well-Established Firm

‘I don’t know Harley, what about these two.’  
  
Alexandra Satterthwaite, third generation of Satterthwaites in the offices of Satterthwaite and Quin, still matches profiles like her grandfather did, by littering her desk with them and scanning rapidly with her eyes, trying to catch similar words, prospective futures, and making small marks with a green pen when she finds something that fits.  
  
She’s said herself that she’s sure a computer could be programmed to do it quicker, but Mr Quin is not so sure. Computers are not as attuned to nuance as Satterthwaites are. Take the two profiles she’s handed him now. There are similarities in what is said, yes, but there is more, far more, in what has gone unsaid.  
  
‘Yes, I think you’re right. Can we book them consecutive meetings?’  
  
‘S’long as they can both do Tuesday after next.’  
  
She rings Mr Fell after lunch – it's a company maxim that people are always more accommodating after a decent lunch, and she can’t imagine Fell giving himself anything less. Crowley she emails at the same time, although she doesn’t expect a response until the evening. The rest of the day is devoted to spreadsheets. Might as well get them done while it’s quiet. It’s back to back appointments all next week, and Tuesday after next comes around fast.  
  
‘Good Morning. Mr Fell isn’t it? Tea and coffee over here. Take a seat.’  
  
It’s not a large office. A few chairs for people waiting to be interviewed, an old looking desk and new looking swivel chair. The kind of office phone that used to be ubiquitous, with multiple buttons for putting the caller through to different departments. Battered filing cabinets that are almost certainly made redundant by the computer the young lady is working on, and one small coffee table littered with local theatre brochures and KCW Weekly, which is not precisely a local paper but not far astray from it’s home boroughs either.  
  
The tea is surprisingly good, clearly made just a few minutes before, and there is fresh milk in a jug and a short stack of bourbon biscuits.  
  
On the stroke of ten, without any apparent signal from the inner office, Alex shows Aziraphale in, and roughly 45 minutes later he comes out feeling as if he’s just been turned inside out and right way round again.  
  
Mr Quin, the man who has just interviewed him, is simply one of the most unsettling people he’s ever met. Not unpleasant, no. Seemingly quite charming in fact. But far too good at knowing what you’re thinking before you think it. Picking out all the questions in the form that Aziraphale wasn’t confident about, and drawing him out on what his answers actually meant.  
  
There had been something too about how he hadn’t seemed to look at the paperwork often enough – as though he were pretending to need to refer to it but in fact had memorised every word.  
  
Then there was the brightly coloured window to the left side of the room, casting a pattern over his light suit and making it look chequered, almost pantomimish, in a way Aziraphale wouldn't have thought the weak light would manage (but now he knows he's being ridiculous).  
  
The outer office is rather a relief in its normality to be honest, and the very business-like young woman is already printing out a contract for Aziraphale to take home and sign if he’s happy with it, as well as suggesting he have another biscuit before he goes.  
  
‘That’s what they’re there for.’ She says pleasantly.   
  
But he doesn’t quite like to disturb the other person already waiting, nursing a cup of coffee from the drip machine, elbows on his knees, dark red hair flopping forward over dark glasses.  
  
Aziraphale hopes he hasn’t been waiting long, and glancing at the clock, is surprised to see his own interview only took the prescribed three quarters of an hour. He could have sworn he’d been here half the morning.  
  
Perhaps, he thinks as he heads down the narrow stairwell, it’s just that he’s not used to doing so much talking about himself. Yes, that’s probably it.  
  
Later, over fresh tea and the nicer biscuits, Alex has to admit that they barely looked at one another.  
  
‘Perhaps that’s a good thing though. It wouldn’t do for one of them to fall madly in love at first sight and the other one to still be all ‘marriage of convenience’ about it.’   
  
‘The interviews went well.’ Says Quin. ‘They’re both very much in earnest. I had my doubts about Crowley at first but his humour is a defence mechanism, not a lack of intent.’  
  
‘I’ll book them for a good long lunch. Then one of them can cry off and go back to work if it’s a disaster. They live, like, 20 minutes walk away from each other and he works near Goodge Street so, what do you think, that little French style bistro near the museum? Not too busy, not too romantic. Just to see if they can bear each other. And then if it’s on we’ll bring them in here together to talk terms and timescales.’  
  
Mr Quin considers. ‘Yes. An afternoon meeting I think. If they’re in contact they may like to arrive together.’  
  
‘Or have a drink after.’  
  
Which just goes to show that in their own way, and however matter of fact their literature, the small but well-established firm of Satterthwaite and Quin are romantics.


	4. Red Wine and Terrible Weather

Somewhere between the call from the bureau setting this up and the date fixed for the lunch with ‘Mr Aziraphale Fell’ the warm weather smashes spectacularly into a series of mid-May cloudbursts.  
  
The squeals of people caught by surprise, as if they hadn’t noticed the rain gods doing this for days, draws Crowley to the window of his office. Gutters flood with the sudden onslaught, and from the second floor he can see how the buses pulling up to the stop outside create currents that vaguely remind him of Da Vinci drawings. For – was it the Duke of Milan? Building a canal? Something like that. It was all about the flow of water, anyway.  
  
In the meantime Crowley has spent way too much time wondering if 'Aziraphale Fell' is a made up name, given how it sounds like something from Dickens. He might be wrong though - Crowley has never read anything by Dickens except a short non-fiction piece about abolishing the death penalty. He has seen at least three TV adaptations of A _Christmas Carol_ though, and the musical version of _Oliver Twist_.

He hopes the restaurant is warm. The pictures on the website look cosy. All dark wood and those mirrors with curly writing on. _Bieres, vins, champagne a la coupe._ They’re meant to be sitting in the window, which had sounded like a great idea when what’s her name – Alex – had said it. He’d thought he could stroll casually past and maybe see what Fell was like before the other man saw him (make sure he was actually there, too).  
  
Probably best to order a taxi and not turn up like a drowned rat though, minimise his chances of spending the whole meal shivering.  
  
As it is he manages to get just a bit damp dashing between the cab door and the striped awning, and can feel the snug heat as soon as he steps in. The waitress smiles when he gives his name, shows him to the table in the window, sets a menu in front of him, turns his glass over, and is gone.  
  
Leaving him with Fell. He didn’t get a picture – something about prejudgements, which he hadn’t quibbled, since the presumption people always make from his own appearance is that he’s up for a quick shag and not much else. He hadn't really done more than glance in that direction when he'd sat down either. Just enough to get a confused impression of blue eyes and pale curls, the polite putting down of the book Fell was reading when Crowley arrived ( _Gulliver’s Travels_ , still neatly lined up to the left of the paler man’s fork), a murmur of welcome.  
  
Then it had suddenly hit Crowley how bloody awkward this all is, and he had murmured something just as vague in reply, and firmly looked out of the window as if anything in the street might have become totally fascinating in the last 10 seconds since he came in.  
  
‘Um.. terrible weather.’ The other man offers. Brave enough to realise one of them should say something. ‘Really quite shocking, and it was so nice just a few days ago too.’  
  
‘Yeah. I like it warm myself.’  
  
‘I’m Aziraphale, um, as I expect you know.’ Aziraphale hears himself chuckle nervously and rather wishes the earth would swallow him up. Or that his dining partner would look at him at least. ‘You must be Anthony Crowley.’  
  
Crowley is being an arse, knows he’s being an arse, knows the poor bastard is trying, but is suddenly almost jittering with nerves. All the worse somehow because he doesn’t get nerves. Not in these last 30 years anyway. He’s always been swaggering and noisy and.. and it’s different when you’re out of your comfort zone.  
  
‘But I understand you prefer to be called Crowley?’ Fell is still trying. Direct question, which is good. It forces Crowley to pretend to be a bloody adult who can manage a bloody conversation.  
  
‘Yep.’ He says. ‘It’s more..’ Well, if he’s honest it's more that when he was 20 and first started out on his own he thought it sounded cool. Somehow though he doesn’t want to admit this to the man sitting opposite who looks like he’s never had a shallow thought about ‘being cool’ in his life. Who looks comfortable and neatly dressed and a proper grown up. ‘Well s’just people have always called me that.’  
  
‘Drinks, gentlemen?’  
  
‘Should we have a bottle of wine? Or do you need to get back to work?’  
  
Crowley shakes his head. He’s taken the afternoon off. It’s easier. ‘Red’s good for me. What have they got?’ He finally looks down at his own little clipboard of menus.  
  
‘For myself I’m rather fond of the Bourgeuil,’ This has cherry overtones, according to Crowley’s menu, which is fine by him. He’s almost never met a red wine he didn’t like. ‘and some water please.’ Aziraphale adds. ‘I'm happy with tap water unless..’  
  
‘Yeah, that’s fine.’ Crowley realises he’s still wearing his sunglasses and takes them off, blinking. The light is dim in here, he doesn’t need them. It’s the computer and the fluorescents at work that are the real killer.  
  
‘You’ve been here before?’ He asks.  
  
‘I’m sorry?’  
  
‘The wine. I thought maybe you’d been here before.’  
  
‘No, actually, they have that particular vintage at the Royal Academy bar. I don’t know if you’ve ever been?’  
  
‘Went to the – what’s his name.’ Crowley clicks his fingers as an aid to memory. ‘Ai Weiwei thing, when they had it going all night. About 3 in the morning.’  
  
‘Ah yes, I think I saw that. At a more conventional hour though.’  
  
‘I did a couple of things that sort of time. Alexander McQueen and an all-night cinema thing. It’s.. odd, sort of adds a dreamy feel to it.’  
  
‘I must confess I’m only ever up that late if I can’t put a book down.’ Aziraphale feels he's being a bit of a relic saying it. Considers himself in his tartan pyjamas, feet toasty on a hot water bottle, cup of cocoa on the nightstand. Not a very romantic figure.  
  
‘I didn’t know they had a bar.’  
  
‘Downstairs. There’s a courtyard garden off it too. Rather a nice spot but terribly busy in the summer.’ He sets down his menu. ‘The crepes to start, I think, and then the steak and pomme frites.’  
  
Crowley just wants an omelette. Has barely looked at the menu.  
  
‘Well I could forgo the crepes and..’  
  
‘No. Don’t be daft. I’ll maybe have some olives and those squished tomato things.’  
  
Aziraphale brightens again. ‘Well, if you’re sure.’  
  
‘Course I’m sure.’  
  
How considerate, Aziraphale thinks. I didn’t expect that when he sat down, but he’s rather nice.  
  
Wine and water arrive and are poured into glasses. There is the small charade of tasting the wine first, which Aziraphale seems to enjoy, and Crowley is happy to let him do, and the green olives and sundried tomatoes, which turn up almost immediately.  
  
‘Have an olive.’ Crowley says, stabbing aggressively into one with his fork before bringing it to his mouth.  
  
‘Thank you my dear.’ Aziraphale uses the cocktail stick provided. He’s rather delicate in his movements, small sips of wine, dabs of his mouth with the napkin. Prissy, Crowley thinks, and completely unapologetic about it.  
  
He takes forever to eat his crepes, and a small ice-age to polish off the steak. They talk about the rebranding of this particular part of London as ‘The Knowledge Quarter’.  
  
‘At least it’s not ‘Midtown’, I suppose.’  
  
‘Noho.’  
  
‘Stoppit.’ Aziraphale actually sets down his knife and fork to put his hands over his ears. ‘Please, I can’t bear it.’  
  
Crowley has a loud laugh. Aziraphale feels he should mind the heads that turn in their direction. He doesn’t.  
  
He actually rather likes it. He’s having fun.  
  
‘Have a drop more wine.’ He suggests, pouring the last of it in Crowley’s glass. ‘You know we haven’t talked about..’  
  
‘The thing,’ Crowley says portentously, somewhat spoiling the effect by adding. ‘the thingy thing.’  
  
‘Yes,’ Aziraphale agrees, smiling because he can’t help it. ‘the thingy thing.’

Unfortunately neither of them really know how to start that conversation. It casts a small but awkward cloud over the table.  
  
In the end Aziraphale takes refuge in logistics. ‘I understand that, assuming our first impressions are.. favourable, Ms Satterthwaite or one of her minions will book us to make a notice of intent at a Westminster registry office.’  
  
‘Do you think she has minions? It’s not a big office. I assumed it was just them two.’  
  
‘Well, one doesn’t need a big office these days. Assuming internet contact..’ Aziraphale pulls himself up. ‘Perhaps not relevant. What I intended to say was that I understand the registry office will not accept a declaration of intent unless we have a venue.’  
  
‘They must have venues. Unless.. do you want a big do?’  
  
‘Heavens no. Yourself?’  
  
‘I’m not even inviting my mother.’  
  
‘That seems a shame.’  
  
‘Trust me, you don’t want her there..‘ Crowley catches himself now. ‘I mean, if we.. anyway.’  
  
‘Yes..’ Aziraphale murmurs. ‘Obviously, if we..’  
  
He lets the sentence tail off, reaches for the menu again at least partly to have something to do with his hands.  
  
‘I don’t know if you’re interested in dessert?’  
  
‘Nah. Just a coffee for me I think. What’ve they got.’ He leans forward to read upside down rather than look at his own menu.  
  
‘All the usual suspects.’ Aziraphale says, tilting the menu down a bit so Crowley can see it better. ‘Oh dear, the cherry clafoutis does sound tempting.’  
  
‘Go for it. It’ll fit with the wine. I’ll maybe have a liqueur as well. Have they got a triple sec?’  
  
‘They do.’ As if by magic – or possibly because it’s not that busy and they were seen to pick up the menu again, the waitress appears to take their order at once.  
  
‘And some peppermint tea for me.’ Aziraphale adds.  
  
Crowley’s eyes are hazel, an attractive but slightly sceptical looking colour, Aziraphale thinks.  
  
‘Do you really want to talk about venues?’ He suddenly asks. Aziraphale sighs.  
  
‘Perhaps not. As you say the company will have suggestions. The wedding is hardly the most important part, and I understand you can get married practically anywhere these days.’  
  
‘Well almost anywhere. I don’t think you can just rock up to – I dunno – Westfield shopping centre and do it in the Lego store.’  
  
‘Perhaps just as well.’ Aziraphale says dryly. ‘Not that I imagine anyone would want to.’  
  
‘Convenient for the clothes though.’ Crowley says. ‘And the rings. And some sorts of cake..’  
  
‘Really my dear? I have standards.’  
  
He has called Crowley that twice now, but Crowley thinks perhaps he does it to everyone.  
  
‘And then you could make little Lego versions of yourself to take home.’ He finishes up. ‘What’s not to like?’  
  
It’s maybe a good thing that dessert arrives at that moment and Aziraphale is spared answering.  
  
Instead he carefully cuts away a segment of his cherry tart with the edge of his dessert fork and lifts it to his lips, eyes fluttering closed a moment as he savours, a small smile gracing his lips.  
  
Crowley is startled to feel a slight but definite shiver of attraction in response. That happy little smile and upturned nose. Those ridiculous curls and cheeks. He’s like a naughty cherub.  
  
Which is a weird and slightly dodgy thing to find attractive. Moving on.  
  
‘You know Crowley this is just scrumptious. You really should try a bit.’  
  
Made weak by Aziraphale’s enthusiasm, Crowley caves and takes a small taste of with the aid of his coffee spoon.  
  
Like all sweet things he enjoys the one mouthful but thinks much more would be sickly.   
  
‘Like those Pepsi challenge things.’ Aziraphale observes.   
  
‘What?’  
  
‘Oh I read a book about it. The challenge, as I’m sure you remember, was a sip of coke and a sip of pepsi and then the challengee, as it were, picked their favourite.’  
  
‘Yeah I remember, always seemed a pretty cheap way of doing ads.’  
  
‘And predicated upon a false assumption. That if one preferred a sip of something one would necessarily prefer a full glass of it.’  
  
‘And there was a whole book about that?’  
  
‘Well, no. About lots of things, how different foods taste different if the packaging or colouring is altered. About perceptions.’  
  
‘So like, if I dyed my hair brown people might take me more seriously.’  
  
‘Oh, is that the natural colour?’ Aziraphale asks, all surprised eyebrows and sugared cherries suspended on a fork halfway to his mouth. He is, Crowley decides, just a bit of a bastard. Just enough to leaven the fussy professor bit of him.  
  
‘It used to be.’ Crowley mutters.  
  
‘I’m sorry, that was unfair.’ Aziraphale admits.  
  
He doesn’t ask, although it is on the tip of his tongue to do so, what Crowley means when he suggests people don’t take him seriously.  
  
Alex Satterthwaite has shared the broader strokes of what Crowley wants. Marriage, permanency. The same things as Aziraphale.  
  
More detailed information, and the chance (indeed the imperative) to discuss it, will be provided only if they both decide this first meeting is favourable.  
  
Aziraphale remembers now, with the last bite of his tart, that he had intended to make a good impression. Is not sure how he had somehow become so comfortable in the conversation and conviviality that he had forgotten that need.  
  
There is a short debate over the bill, which both of them want to pay, but which Aziraphale surrenders gracefully after a token protest.  
  
He suspects that it’s a gesture, a consolation for the phone call he will undoubtedly get later telling him Crowley is not interested.

Of course it doesn’t matter (Aziraphale tells himself firmly, later that day in his bookshop after he’s called the bureau, then at night in his bed with the rest of _Gulliver’s Travels_ , and finally over breakfast next morning). They barely know one another. Satterthwaite and Quin or LetsB.. whatever the damn ridiculous trademark name is, will simply have to set up a meeting with someone else.  
  
He must try not to compare them with Crowley if that happens.  
  
Perhaps it would be better to do something other than lunch next time – it was a very nice lunch, admittedly, but it can’t have been much fun for Crowley, watching Aziraphale linger over three courses and prattle about half-forgotten books when he’d only really wanted a quick omelette. Of course he was much too nice to say so, despite his slightly prickly façade, but not everyone…  
  
The ringing of the telephone interrupts Aziraphale’s train of thought. Alex Satterthwaite confirming that she has heard from Crowley and now she has the go ahead from both of them she will book them to visit Westminster Registry Office in about two week’s time.  
  
A month from that they can get married.  
  
‘I.. Yes of course.’ Aziraphale says. Six weeks. The efficiency is almost frightening. He sits at his kitchen table with the lifted varnish where he’s set hot pots and pans down on it, tries to picture Crowley in that space. They’ll have to get another chair, he thinks.  
  
It looks shabbier, thinking of someone else seeing it. The old gas cooker with the eyeline grill, the beige microwave he only uses to heat soup. Even the teacosy has seen better days.  
  
Alex is still talking. ‘As you know we’d like to see you both in the office to discuss venues. We’ll also be sending each of you a print out of your questionnaire answers for comparison. It’s up to you if you want to discuss them at the meeting, or privately, but we do recommend you have that discussion.’  
  
‘I.. yes.’ Aziraphale isn’t sure what the emotion he’s feeling is.  
  
Trepidation? Excitement? Whatever it is it makes it hard to concentrate on what Ms Satterthwaite is saying now about data regulations. She has to repeat it again before it really sinks in that she’s asking if he wants to change anything.  
  
‘Probably best to be honest and leave it as it is, I think.’ Aziraphale says.  
  
‘And would you prefer to go through it here or just between yourselves?’  
  
‘I.. has Crowley expressed a preference?’  
  
‘Crowley suggested meeting up for sushi after work.’  
  
Aziraphale brightens. ‘Oh yes that sounds.. yes. There’s a very good place practically on my doorstep in fact.’


	5. Terribly Humourless Translations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Making plans..

It’s not until he’s actually in the restaurant with Crowley sliding in opposite that it occurs to Aziraphale that nice as the place is, it’s not very private. Rather exposed and crowded in fact.

The light over their booth feels like a spotlight glaring down.  
  
Crowley’s thoughts are apparently running along the same lines.  
  
‘Bright in here isn’t it?’  
  
‘Does the light bother you?’  
  
‘I am a creature of the night.’ Crowley says dramatically, making a joke of it but also keeping his sunglasses on.  
  
‘I could tell that just from the clothes.’ Aziraphale hesitates. ‘Perhaps you’d be willing to move on to the bookshop afterwards? It would be more private. I’ve got rather a nice Malbec – nothing fancy but quite drinkable. The lights are less glaring too.’  
  
‘Sure. No rush though, yeah?’ He hands Aziraphale his menu with a slight flourish. ‘So, what are you having?’  
  
Crowley isn’t too fussed himself. Actually likes the sauce more than he likes any other part of eating sushi. The rice and fish is just a vehicle for the tang of fermented soy. He’s the same with gravy and potatoes, crunchy salads and balsamic vinegar.  
  
Aziraphale savours, chopsticks poised as he considers each time which prettily wrapped parcel to have, adding tiny infusions of wasabi or dabblings of sauce in contrast to Crowley’s drownings.  
  
They end up talking nonsense again, mostly about vampires this time, since creatures of the night have already been mentioned. Aziraphale takes a turn into Japanese ghost stories over the last of the sake and fizzy water – mostly water, since they’ve a bottle of red at the shop and tomorrow is, tragically another work day. Lamenting the lack of really good translations of so much historical material.  
  
‘Not that Japan is unique in that. We’ve barely scraped the surface of Russia, and sometimes such terribly humourless translations when we do. It’s my turn to pay you know.’  
  
Crowley holds up his hands in surrender while Aziraphale pays.  
  
‘Do you think it’s the same the other way round?’  
  
‘Oh undoubtedly. I saw the most awful German translation of _Vanity Fair_ once. I don’t think the translator had quite realised Thackeray was a satirist, and clearly after he’d gone to all that trouble – Vanity Fair is 700 pages if it’s a line - no-one had quite liked to tell him.’  
  
‘I saw _Wuthering Heights_ on TV in Italy when I was there and it was all wrong. Heathcliff wasn’t nearly evil enough. Just another love story.’  
  
‘You wouldn’t describe _Wuthering Heights_ as a love story?’  
  
‘No, it’s a ghost story. She comes back to hound him to death so he can’t do any more damage.’  
  
‘Hmm. That is interesting. I hadn’t thought of it like that.’ They’re on the street now, weaving in and out of late night revellers. ‘Of course the different meanings of ‘romantic’ – in the literary sense – do leave that whole genre open to confusion.'

They cross the road between a parked up Saab and what look like gasworks.  
  
‘They never stop digging the road up just here. It was cable television last month. There.’ He adds, indicating the bookshop. ‘Just on the corner.’   
  
‘How long have you been here?’  
  
‘Over twenty years now, but of course it was my great uncle’s shop before me.’  
  
It's strange looking at the façade with someone else. It's so familiar to Aziraphale, so dear. He's actually a little nervous about having another person in this space, and yet he knows that if Crowley is going to move in they’ll both have to get used to it. He turns the key and flicks the switch by the door.  
  
A bell tinkles gently as Crowley closes the door again behind them both.  
  
As promised the light in the bookshop is soft, low energy bulbs and a gold-toned lamp which Aziraphale puts on to make an extra pool of illumination on his desk. The dark wood shelving and the various sun-faded shades of book spine - browns and reds and greens and blues - are muted and blended into non-threatening shadows.  
  
‘I’ll get the wine.’  
  
‘Thanks.’ Crowley says, sprawling on a couch that somehow contrives to be comfortable despite having all the support of a used teabag.  
  
It’s warm – radiators painted brown to go with everything else, shaped like the ones Crowley remembers from middle school, cosy to lean on but not to sit unless you wanted ridges in your bum.  
  
‘Do you live in the shop?’ He asks.  
  
‘Mostly. There is a small flat but it is literally three rooms, and there are bookcases in all of them.’  
  
‘Even in the bathroom?’  
  
‘Just a small one, yes. I sometimes like to read cheap paperbacks in the bath.’ He pulls the cork and pours. ‘Although of course it’s not terribly good for them.’  
  
‘I think you should show me.’  
  
‘The books?’ Aziraphale is stalling.  
  
‘The flat.’  
  
‘Yes, I.’ Aziraphale sighs. ‘I suppose that’s only fair.’  
  
He leads the way up a half-spiral of wooden stairs where there is another floor of books, small tables and shelving round the walls or at right angles to it, making brief book-lined corridors with paintings or radiators or mirrors at the ends, speckled with age. There are two doors as well, one with a fire exit sign and the other, when it is opened, leading to a wallpapered corridor with three rooms off of it.  
  
The first is a bathroom which looks smaller than it really is due to the dark blue tiles and overly large bath. There is also, as promised, a short bookcase full of tatty paperbacks and topped off with an old analogue radio, shaving things, and a box of bath salts.  
  
The kitchen is a particular shade of turquoise Crowley associates specifically with the British seaside. Something about postcards and seawater swimming pools and out of date fairground rides. The crockery and cutlery Crowley can see is a mishmash of 60s and 70s with the odd new piece – a white mug, a fancy bento box, a glass weighing scale - thrown in.  
  
‘Uncle Thomas was very fond of the colour blue you see.’  
  
‘But you’ve painted since then.’ It’s not a question, the walls simply don’t have the scuffing and discolouring twenty years of cooking and cleaning and shifting furniture would leave.  
  
‘Oh yes, but it was easiest to keep the same colour scheme. I’ve no idea about that kind of thing.’  
  
There is, of course, another bookcase in here, stripped pine – very mock rustic and eighties – loaded mostly with cookery books and newspapers and catalogues. Gardening books too. Jekyll and Geoff Hamilton and Sackville-West.  
  
‘I.. do you mind not seeing the bedroom. I don’t think I made the bed.’ Aziraphale says suddenly.  
  
‘Sorry, I’m being.. you don’t have to.. Its just, it’s a period piece, this flat.’ Crowley gestures at the gardening books, keen to change the subject. ‘Have you been to Sissinghurst?’  
  
‘Oh yes, marvellous place. Can you imagine writing in that tower, with that wonderful garden just out of the window, and the trees and the river beyond?’  
  
He leads Crowley back as if to go downstairs again. Hesitates and opens the door at the end of the corridor which leads to the same wide balcony that the fire door does, with a ladder down to the courtyard below. ‘This is how deliveries come in you see. It’s next door who mostly use it. They buy wholesale.’  
  
He locks the door behind him and brings Crowley back into the bookshop, still talking.  
  
‘You know when I first came to London I had every intention of writing a book myself. A guidebook at first, like all the ones I’d enjoyed reading, blending history and practical information and reportage, but after a while I realised that I was trying to recreate what already existed, scattered through lots of different books from different times, and it would probably be much more enjoyable for my reader to find those books – or different ones that spoke to them personally – and read the authentic voices.’  
  
‘So what did you do?’  
  
‘Well then I thought I’d write a crime novel, mostly because I love reading those as well. But really the kind of mystery I like seemed so dated – country houses, poisoned chocolates, you know the sort of thing, that I thought I’d need a modern heroine with a completely different background to myself. But of course I don’t know the first thing about that kind of thing – she was of Bengali extraction you see – and the books I have are rather out of date and often written by the sort of obnoxious adventurer that likes to name mountains and lakes after himself.’  
  
‘Ah.’ Says Crowley, settling himself back on the sofa with his wine.  
  
‘And then of course it occurred to me how terribly presumptuous I was being as well, sitting in my ivory tower creating this fictional character that I was probably going to get all wrong – not just because of where her ancestors came from, but for lots of class and gender based reasons too – and that it might be better to let someone with those experiences write those books themselves if they want to.’  
  
‘And if they can get a publisher.’ Crowley points out. ‘Wine’s good by the way.’  
  
Aziraphale sips his own. ‘Thank you.’ He sighs. ‘The truth is I’m a much happier reader than writer anyway. You have to polish and polish and polish again until the words slide down like.. ice cream or mashed potatoes. No lumps.’  
  
‘But real life is lumpy.’ Crowley objects. ‘Real life is,’ He gestures with his wine. Not too expansively, not so as to spill it. ‘all over the place. Twirly. Twiny. And I suppose if you’re writing - a story I mean - you have to leave lots of bits out to makes it look all nice and neat and not a big ball of gooey – stuff, but that makes it less real too.’  
  
He thinks for a moment, composing an argument. ‘I mean, it’s like, in tv programs you almost never see people’s birthdays unless its because something's gone wrong do you? Like "it’s my birthday and no-one remembered and now there’s an alien invasion as well" or "my mum ran off to Trinidad with my vampire boyfriend" or something. But they should all have birthdays. Everyone in _CSI Miami_ and _James Bond_ and all those things should have birthdays.’  
  
‘Perhaps they take the day off?’  
  
‘Then they should bring cake into work the day after. I bloody have to.’

Aziraphale smiles. ‘I’m not sure either of us have drunk enough for this conversation.’  
  
‘Me neither.’  
  
‘Of course really..’  
  
‘Really..?’ Crowley encourages.  
  
‘Well, we’re only having it to put off the inevitable aren’t we?’  
  
‘You mean I’ll show you mine if you..’  
  
‘Hmm.’ Aziraphale admits. ‘Although I wouldn’t have put it quite like that.’  
  
Crowley sticks his tongue out at him. Realises he’s being a brat and relents.  
  
‘Ok, Yes.’ He sighs, rummaging in his briefcase for a plastic wallet as Aziraphale takes a notebook – the sort with a black elastic strap across – and unfolds a printed sheet from it.  
  
Aziraphale is reminded absurdly of a children’s party game as they exchange the papers without looking at them.  
  
Crowley hesitates before taking off his glasses. Reasoning that it’s never going to work if they keep their defences up. Aziraphale wavers too, deciding whether to go back to his usual chair or come to sit beside Crowley on the couch. In the end he chooses the couch.  
  
He also puts on a metal framed pair of reading specs that make him look unnecessarily fussy and older than he is, and which he apparently doesn’t need in order to read restaurant menus, but Crowley is choosing to ignore that.  
  
They both read for a bit.  
  
‘For a self-professed creature of the night your answer to question one is interesting.’ Aziraphale says at last.  
  
‘Even creatures of the night need cuddles.’ Crowley mutters awkwardly.  
  
‘Of course they do.’ Before he can overthink it Aziraphale reaches over and puts his hand over Crowley’s. Gives it a careful squeeze. It earns him a glance, and a small smile as Crowley squeezes back.  
  
Emboldened, he lets go to slip his arm around Aziraphale’s shoulders, very cautiously, ready to stop if the other man is uncomfortable, so that with both of them turning towards one another they do end up in a loose embrace.  
  
Not a cuddle, quite, although Aziraphale does burrow a bit deeper into Crowley’s side as Crowley's arm curls him closer, hiding his face against Crowley’s jacket. He had known he was lonely. He hadn’t realised quite how badly he wanted to be held, like a small child, without needing an excuse.  
  
He’s actually a little bit tearful, but hopefully Crowley won’t notice.  
  
Crowley, in turn, is wondering if he can press a kiss to the pale and worried looking forehead just inches from his lips. Probably not, though.  
They’re meant to be talking aren’t they? And he did say – and he can see now from the form that Aziraphale said as well – that sex is not that important.  
  
Not that kisses mean sex _per se_ , but they should probably just wait and see if anything happens.  
  
‘Yes.’ Aziraphale makes an effort to pull himself together as Crowley loosens his grip and says so. ‘We’ll see how we feel.’  
  
The next question.. well. ‘The place is tidy, really.’ Aziraphale insists. ‘It’s just cluttered. And as you said, somewhat dated.’  
  
‘S’not what I said.’ Crowley doesn’t really want to talk about this, what he wants is to curl up again around the soft warmth of Aziraphale’s body and his well worn jacket and his cotton fluff hair. Wants all sorts of soppy things, like falling asleep together, that would have horrified his teenage self. ‘If you’re not that fussed about the kitchen though that definitely needs a makeover.’  
  
‘I’m fonder of the bathroom. I do love a good soak.’  
  
For some reason Crowley’s mental picture of Aziraphale in the bath includes chocolates and cognac, some grand Alphonse Mucha figure that dissolves into blue swirls below the waist.  
  
A long way from the man who is now straightening his tie and sitting up properly. Saying they really should get on and asking about Crowley’s apparent desire – well no, not _desire_ , that’s possibly too strong..  
  
‘Spit it out Angel.’  
  
‘This suggestion you would want to.. well, feed me.’  
  
‘I don’t mean it in a strange way, I mean I don’t want to hold the spoon or cut up your food anything.’  
  
Crowley can see from Aziraphale’s face that those thoughts hadn’t even occurred to him, and don’t remotely appeal, and hurries on. ‘I just mean, I can cook.’  
  
‘And we both know I can eat.’ It’s meant to sound light, but Aziraphale can hear for himself that it doesn’t. It sounds defensive.  
  
Which is silly. It’s been ages since anyone teased him about his appetite. He, like Crowley, hurries on.  
  
‘Although before I agree to anything I would like to be confident that you can, in fact, cook.’  
  
And now he’s been bloody rude. Jolly well done Aziraphale.  
  
‘Excuse me?’  
  
‘I just meant, you do eat rather less than me.’  
  
‘I eat when I’m hungry.’  
  
‘Well when you’re hungry I daresay a crust of dry bread would suffice.’ Aziraphale could happily bite his tongue out. What is wrong with him? (but he knows perfectly well what is wrong with him. Why this whole subject still makes him feel queasy inside).  
  
‘Alright then. Come round sometime this week and I’ll cook, whatever you fancy.’  
  
‘That’s very kind of you.’ Aziraphale tries to apologise ‘Sorry, I don’t know why I..’ He tails off.  
  
Crowley is making a face, as if being told he’s kind pains him somehow.  
  
‘S’fine. So what are we having, then?’  
  
Aziraphale tries to think of something fairly straightforward and settles on lasagne. He’ll bring a bottle of red.  
  
After that little bump Aziraphale is thankful the money question is unchallenging. He tries not to think it in poor taste as well. Brought up to describe himself as comfortably-off, he’s learnt since that only well-off people get to think money is too vulgar to think about. Comfortably-off people have mortgages and an hour's commute to work. Less well off people live in single rooms.  
  
There is a similar culture clash with holidays.  
  
‘Some people have to work, you know.’ Crowley says. ‘I can get a week off, maybe two. So I could come out and come back early or meet you halfway through and come back together.'  
  
‘Either would be nice. I do appreciate it.’ In theory of course Crowley could give up work completely, but Aziraphale can tell instinctively that suggestion would not be well received. Quite rightly. He wouldn’t take kindly to it himself.  
  
Crowley has already agreed to relocate as far as here from Mayfair, so that question seems redundant.  
  
‘Subject to kitchen improvements.’ Aziraphale notes.  
  
They are now down to children and pets – Sticky things, Aziraphale always thinks, although he has adopted the odd cat over the years, or perhaps it would be more honest to say they had adopted him.  
  
Crowley has never thought of either. He had some angel fish for a bit, but they gradually died of old age, or possibly boredom.  
  
‘Plants are easier. They don’t try to eat their own babies for a start.’  
  
‘Do you have a garden?’  
  
‘Nah, they’re indoor plants, but yeah, there’s a lot. They’re not going to fit in that flat.’  
  
‘What about here then, upstairs as near to the oculus as we can manage? Or under it?’ Aziraphale sets down his empty glass and paces to the middle of a circular carpet, all creams and greys. ‘You can’t tell at this hour but there’s quite a lot of light here. That’s partly why I don’t have any tables directly beneath it.’  
  
‘Maybe.’ Talking about hobbies makes Crowley realise something else. ‘You don’t have a television.’  
  
‘I have a laptop. I watch the occasional show on that. Where would you put a television?’  
  
‘Mine’s on the wall in the living room. You know - the traditional place.’  
  
'Again - somewhere in the shop perhaps? We could rope off a corner.’ Aziraphale is off upstairs again, waiting at the top for Crowley to join him. ‘I think if we tuck an armchair in front of this window and maybe put a curtain here, to close off this section of shelving when we’re open, that would provide some privacy and also - to be blunt a moment - deaden the sound a bit.’  
  
He considers the open shelf. ‘I might move the drama books here too. It seems appropriate.’  
  
Crowley pulls back the window curtain. It’s quiet in the street at the moment, probably because it’s started raining again. Just the lit windows of the bars and a few stragglers heading home. Van Gogh could probably make something beautiful of it.  
  
More to the point there’s a wide windowsill that should get lots of sun in the summer. A radiator beneath means he’ll have to mind anything on it doesn’t dry out, but it will certainly be a warm spot for himself to curl up in. Maybe he could have this windowsill for succulents and then by the – what did Aziraphale call it? - the oculus, his big crassula and the philodendron spilling over the railings into the shop below – and then the more upright things – sansevieria and ficus and the aspidistra downstairs on some plant stands. Old Victorian mahogany or cast iron (his own flat is brutalist with art deco accents, but he knows a few reclamation places). With smaller plants weaved in and out of the big ones.  
  
‘I’m very fond of French marigolds, myself.’ Aziraphale ventures.  
  
‘OK, but that’s a totally different aesthetic.’  
  
‘Perhaps in the flat then?’  
  
Crowley can see that actually. Little pots of French marigolds and herbs on the kitchen windowsill.  
  
‘And then you can cook with them.’ Aziraphale says happily. ‘Come on, lets finish the wine.’

The thing is, Crowley's not an idiot. 

This feeling of a bubble around himself and one other person, that nothing can go wrong, this dizzy rightness – he knows what it means.

He’s falling, he knows he is. He’s been here before. He’s been burned before.

And just like the last time it’s only when he steps away, only when Aziraphale isn’t there, that he has any inkling that he might get burnt again.

But what’s the alternative? Pull out because he likes the man he’s planning to marry _too much_? That’s just bloody stupid. And anyway making Aziraphale smile has now apparently become Crowley’s new favourite thing. Bit difficult to do that when you’re walking away.

Meanwhile there’s this whole mess of studio flats he’s meant to be refitting for overseas students. Fifteen-year-old conversion from a row of Victorian townhouses. If you can call it a conversion when whoever did it just stuck in plasterboard walls every so often and then stuffed the rooms wherever they’d fit.

‘Another one where they’ve put the bath under the stairs and there’s no sodding ventilation.’ He complains. ‘Who designs this crap?’

‘Wasn’t designed was it? Just a buy to rent looking for a quick return. Shoddy work too.’ Eric, one of the generic builders who comes out on these jobs, has got the panel off the bath now and is looking at the plumbing. ‘Not enough camber on that pipe for a start. Empty a full kitchen sink and I reckon you’d get it coming up in the bath here.’

‘Why are they even connected?’

‘Told you, shoddy work. Save a few quid in piping. Here.’ He takes Crowley’s iPad off him and starts adding the cost of labour and materials to the estimate. ‘Couple of days work, max.’ He adds reassuringly, like Crowley hasn’t heard that before.

‘You know I’d really like to rip it all out and redesign it from the bottom.’

Eric just shrugs. He’s heard that one before too.

‘Come on, let’s get the carpet off those stairs, check it for damp.’

Since they’re up that way Crowley spends a half hour in Church Street market for veg – and weren’t the Council meant to be doing this lot up a few years ago? All he can see is a metal arch and a bit of extra paint. Maybe there were protests though. Gentrification, pricing people out of the area, that sort of thing.

He knocks off early when Eric does so that the builder can pull his van up at the kerb and drop him in Park Lane – bit naughty, but if he turns up any of the side roads he’ll be copped for congestion charge.

‘Ta-ta Crowley, be good now.’

He’s got grandchildren, has Eric, should surely be retired, but there’s some kind of story there with his partner getting ill and having to cash in his pension early. Crowley’s gleaned a few details without the full discussion, just like Eric knows Crowley had to live with his uncle for a bit as a kid but doesn’t really know why.

Two more people he’s not inviting to the wedding – Eric because he would think Crowley’s off his head, and Uncle Luc because let’s not go there again. Anyway Mum would throw a fit if Luc was invited but not her, and if she comes she’ll be a fucking nightmare.

OK, and now he’s going to think about something that doesn’t set his fight and flight off.

Japanese knives, Spanish onions, British mince, Italian chopped tomatoes, Irish butter, flour from.. Berkshire, apparently. Hungerford. Wasn’t that where that bloke went berserk and shot all those people? He remembers seeing it on the news and then talking with his mum on the phone afterwards and she was like ‘So what, doesn’t affect me.’ and Luc asking if he’d really only just noticed she was like that..

Lasagne Crowley, focus. Milk from Somerset. Melt butter, dice onions, stop stressing about what you can’t change.

It’s in the oven by the time Aziraphale turns up, punctual to a fault, sitting with his knees together on a chair he admits is much more comfortable than it looks while Crowley chops up carrots and cucumber into sticks and puts them on a plate with a bowl of chive dip and some cherry tomatoes so they can have a snack while they’re waiting for the lasagne.

And yes, there’s that smile again. Crowley is so screwed.

It burns even brighter at the meeting with Alex Satterthwaite. For someone who wasn’t remotely bothered about venues Aziraphale does seem ever so pleased that one can get married from Mayfair Library these days.

‘That’s my local library.’ Crowley says. ‘I’ve never been in.’

From the pictures Crowley finds on his phone it’s a building of two halves. One all creams and browns and fireplaces that probably haven’t seen a coal fire since the fifties, and the other, the actual library, busy with chipboard shelving, blue chairs and beige desks. It’s a small venue, which is what they were looking for.

‘And there’s a garden where you can take pictures.’

‘Who’s going to take pictures?’ Aziraphale asks. ‘We don’t really have any guests.’

‘You will need at least two other people there to witness the marriage. We can provide those if you don’t have anyone you want to come.’

There is a short spat about flowers. Aziraphale does not see the point of flowers if there are no guests, only witnesses, and says so. Crowley contradicts him. He does want flowers. He can’t explain why, but he does. It’ll look better in the pictures, or something.

Aziraphale gets as far as the second ‘But why on earth do we need pictures..’ even though Crowley has already explained he doesn’t mean professional pictures, the witnesses can just take a few snaps perhaps, which Alex has said they’re happy to do.

This time Crowley doesn’t bother to reply, he just hunches his shoulders. By now it's only half about the flowers. The other half is the unvoiced conviction that Aziraphale doesn't care about him as much as he does Aziraphale, and this is proof of it.

‘That is to say..’ Aziraphale stumbles over himself. Unwilling to snatch words back but at the same time realising he truly doesn’t have any strong feelings that would justify _not_ having flowers or ‘a few snaps’ if Crowley would like them. ‘I would have no idea what we’d want, even if.. Did you..’ he hesitates. ‘Did you have any particular thing in mind for the flowers?’

‘Not exactly.’ Crowley is still feeling prickly.

‘Just a colour scheme would be a start.’ Alex suggests. ‘We have some florists we can go through. Or, if you prefer, there is a flower arranger on the payroll. We have a good working relationship with Covent Garden.’

‘How does that work anyway?’ Crowley asks. ‘Do you just turn up and buy bunches?’

‘Normally I look at what they have, and discuss what they can get in for the right date.’

‘Can anyone walk in?’

‘Well they sell in bulk so usually prefer..’ Alex realises she’s getting off topic. ‘Strictly speaking yes, anyone can go. I find four thirty in the morning a good time.’

‘Do you know I think that sounds quite fun.’ Aziraphale has perked up, drawn in by thoughts of H V Morton’s _Nights of London_ and the various other books that had attracted him to the metropolis and buying his siblings out of the shop in the first place.

‘Yeah, I wouldn’t mind.’

‘You’re very welcome to come with me. One night next week perhaps?’

Satterthwaite and Quin do pride themselves on successful marriages, after all, and while tours of flower markets are not strictly in her remit this does seem like a shove in the right direction.

The reality of New Covent Garden market at five in the morning is mayhem. The actual building like the worst sort of airport: confusing signage, strip lighting (Crowley’s glasses come off a couple of times, but not for long), disorientating aisles of plants and lots.

‘I believe it’s best to navigate by looking at the ceiling in this sort of building.’ Aziraphale says, tilting his head back.

‘I think that’s a wonderful idea if we want to be run over.’

There are pallet trucks everywhere, cardboard boxes and pillars painted bright garish colours and lettered with a system that can only possibly make sense if you work here. There are flimsy partitions with packets of ribbon pinned all over them and an overhead glass walkway (or possibly a corridor) with flat doors off it all painted the same dark brown gloss, like something from a 70s spy film.

‘You know the ones.’ Crowley says. ‘More _Ipcress File_ than _James Bond_.’

On the ground however the flowers are assembled so closely in their containers they might almost be bedding. Others are in coloured boxes with the tops off, as though they were chocolates or jewellery. Crowley gravitates to bright colours, fleshy orange gerbera and spikes of dark purple hollyhock.

‘I do like the sweet williams,’ Aziraphale crouches down and breathes in. The smell is faint in the cold air, but rather lovely. ‘and the yellow. What’s the yellow again?’

‘That’s mimosa.’

The stall holder looks dubious. ‘Not sure we’ll have that in next month, gents. Is it the colour you’re after or the shape?’

‘To be perfectly honest it’s the scent.’ Aziraphale closes his eyes to take in the faint, delectable perfume. Crowley looks on fondly.

‘We could try a honeysuckle.’ He suggests. ‘Are we going to want some green or white or something to calm this lot down?’

‘There is a stall that just does greenery.’ Alex offers. ‘We’ll see if we can find some honeysuckle on the way.’

Things seem to be settling a bit as they move through the warehouse. More permanent displays and fewer fresh flowers. Instead there are pot plants and painted twigs and stacks of marble tubs obviously meant for gardens.

Crowley gets distracted by a magnificent agave, a lovely hefty spiral of geometry and sharp spines, and Aziraphale by some miniature rose bushes that are ever so sweet but sadly smell of nothing at all.

By the time they catch up with Alex again Crowley is shivering and rubbing his hands together.

‘I did warn you.’ Alex says. The building is kept at the right temperature for vegetable matter, not people.

‘Here, take these.’ Aziraphale, who is snugly buttoned up in shirt and undershirt and fleecy jumper as well as his coat, digs his gloves out of his pocket and offers them over.

They’re not the only people Alex is sourcing flowers for – just the only ones mad enough to want to tag along – so after picking out a gorgeous bronze iris that is not available yet but will be at its absolute peak in four weeks when the ceremony is, and deciding that the in-house flower arranger is probably best placed to decide what greenery will bring it all together, they decide they’ve seen enough and go to wake themselves with bacon sandwiches and coffee in one of the cafes.

‘Warm in here at least.’ Crowley sheds his stylish coat and peels Aziraphale’s gloves back off. ‘Hope I haven’t stretched them.’

‘I shouldn’t think so, you’re only a little taller.’

‘But my hands are bigger. Look,’ Crowley holds his palm out, fingers spread for Aziraphale to put his own up against them. ‘like a daddy long legs.’

He’s right, Aziraphale’s palm is actually slightly wider but Crowley’s fingers are long and spread. His thumb pushes out past the right angle too.

‘Are you double jointed?’ Aziraphale asks, curling his own fingers through and turning Crowley’s hand to see the back of it.

‘Not really. Little bit.’ He closes his own hand and give’s Aziraphale’s a squeeze before they let go.

Aziraphale is conscious of a bubbling sort of feeling in his head, happiness fizzing up from somewhere. It’s something of an adventure being here this morning. Something he’d never thought to do, and probably wouldn’t have done alone.

‘I wonder if this is what Billingsgate was like, a hundred years ago?’ He asks. ‘Except with fish. And without all the reversing pallet trucks of course.’

‘Old Cries of London Town "Mind your backs, lads, mind your fucking backs”. What?’ Crowley asks the slightly reproachful glance he gets in response. ‘S’true. Billingsgate was famous for the swearing.’

‘So it was. I’d forgotten that.’

The sip their coffee and apply themselves to the sandwiches for a bit.

‘Shall we walk back?’ Aziraphale says suddenly.

‘Walk back home?’

‘Hmm.’

‘I suppose. I don’t mind.’

‘We could get breakfast.’

‘You mean something sweet.’

Aziraphale’s expression is composed of guilt and naughtiness. ‘Does that sound terribly greedy? It’s just that there are some rather nice pastries we could pick up on the way and this early in the morning we’d be sure to get them fresh from the oven and beat the rush.’

Crowley has to grin. ‘Ok, angel. Shall I give Alex a ring and tell her we’re sloping off?’

It’s just on daybreak when they leave. There are a surprising amount of birds about, singing their little heads off. Buses disgorge cleaners and possibly-Polish possibly-builders at Vauxhall bus station, and the Thames has little gold capped waves, picked out by the slanting light of a new day.

A pavement sweeper with a purple ‘better streets’ logo on the side chugs past as they detour away from the river round the MI6 building, and Crowley wonders vaguely which council actually cleans the bridges.

‘I mean, I know it’s called Lambeth Bridge but does that mean they own it, or is it named after where it leads to?’

They don’t cross the river yet, wander down to Westminster Bridge so they can cut across the blunt end of St James’ Park. Aziraphale is struck afresh by the dewy newness of it all, which is a ridiculous thing to think about a centuries-old park.

They don’t talk much because the late night is catching up with both of them, and there’s a novelty in how quiet it still is – no crowds yet, hardly any shops open. Just a couple of hopeful ducks and youthful joggers.

Aziraphale’s grandfather clock is chiming the quarter hour before eight when they get in, setting their frothy coffees and sticky pastries down on a small pedestal table that already has all six volumes of the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ as well as _Nehru's Letters to His Sister_ stacked on it.

By 8am Crowley is yawning on the sofa while Aziraphale is looking for a book on the royal parks he knows is in this corner somewhere. He tosses Crowley a cushion and settles at his desk to read so Crowley can spread out a bit more comfortably if he needs to.

Within ten minutes Crowley is asleep and Aziraphale is completely absorbed, going from London parks to Samuel Pepys’ diary, from Pepys to Christopher Wren. He’s halfway through the London Society’s slim 1929 _Guide to London Churches_ when Crowley wakes up.

‘Did you know there used to be a canal in St James’ Park?’ He says, because he’s been wanting to tell someone this for about two hours. ‘And would you like some tea?’

‘Sounds good. And no, no idea. Not surprised though,’ Crowley almost cracks his jaw yawning. ‘They probably filled loads in once they had trains and that.’

He waits until Aziraphale comes back with tea to ask. ‘Have you been reading all this time?’

‘Yes. It’s quite fascinating.’

What is also fascinating is that Aziraphale is obviously better at late nights than him. Crowley booked today off because he knew he’d just want to go home and sleep in a bed. Tea is helping though.

He checks his watch. 11.30. ‘Shouldn’t you be open by now?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘What time do you usually open?’

‘Oh, it varies.’

‘Don’t people complain?’

‘Yes they do rather. Although I often open late or, if I’m up and feel like it, early, so some people have commented that I’m always open, and others that I’m never open. It’s the luck of the draw, so to speak.’

‘I can only imagine the reviews.’

‘Oh I don’t pay any attention to reviews, I’m not Amazon marketplace.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone did comment on the kinkmeme about thinking Eric was the Eric seen in other fics, which I hadn't meant to do, but probably had subconsciously done. I thought about changing the name when I was tidying this up but I think of him as Eric now. 
> 
> Not remotely relevant to this fic but the last chapter of the book Aziraphale is reading is written by Rev. Arthur G B West, last rector of St Dunstan's in the East, a possible candidate for the church Crowley drops the bomb on in Good Omens. West uses his closing chapter to suggest - since there were 46 city churches in 1929 and so few people lived there - that some could be closed on Sundays and their incumbents work in slums or suburbs, that the churches and their small gardens were a haven for workers even if they didn't want to come to mass, and that those without architectural merit could be used as lecture halls, music schools and libraries.  
> The only online reference I've found for West says that he continued to hold services in the ruins after St Dunstan's was hit. The church was absorbed into All Hallows in the 60s. The shell of St Dunstan's became a city garden.


	6. Betrothed

It’s not long after that people at work begin telling Crowley he looks cheerful.  
  
‘M’not.’ He mutters, partly because he doesn’t like being probed, and partly because they all sound so bloody suspicious when they say it, as if a cheerful Crowley must be up to no good.  
  
He supposes he could make a point of acting cheerier still, just to mess with them, but that seems much too much like hard work, and even more so when he gets pushed off up to the Liverpool office for three days for a bloody focus group. Can’t they just use SurveyMonkey or something if they want to know what people think?  
  
He does get back for Friday though, and lunch with Aziraphale. This time he even dares to suggest a quick kiss on the cheek before he has to wander back to Euston.  
  
Aziraphale looks startled, and then pleased, and then strangely demure, all downcast eyes and a happy little smile that Crowley can’t read as he presses his lips to the softness of Aziraphale’s cheek.  
  
‘Thank you.’ He says, and Crowley doesn’t know if he’s being thanked for the kiss or thanked for asking. Aziraphale is still calling Crowley ‘my dear’ and must surely have noticed by now that Crowley sometimes calls him ‘angel’, but Crowley doesn’t know what any of that means either.  
  
So far they’ve only managed one more ‘proper’ date, visiting the RA garden, since Aziraphale mentioned it. Crowley is particularly enthusiastic about the tree ferns, disturbing two women having cocktails and cashew nuts and a private conversation while he tries to get close to the biggest to inspect the trunk.  
  
They're too polite to say anything, but they do fall silent while he wanders obliviously near, bending and peering as if inspecting the bark and then leaning right back to take in the green fronds above his head.  
  
Aziraphale can see them laying bets on whether he’ll topple over backwards, and finally intervenes, herding Crowley away with polite and slightly fluttery movements.  
  
‘You must excuse my fiancé, he’s something of a plant enthusiast.’  
  
That makes Crowley blink. ‘Fiancé?’ He asks, elbows on the table the better to lean and hear once they’re seated.  
  
‘Would you prefer ‘my betrothed’?’ Aziraphale says mildly. Just the slightest hint of a bastard gleam in his eye.  
  
All in all it's a charming evening, as Aziraphale says, and in the absence of more ‘proper’ dates he insists Crowley is welcome to drop in at the bookshop any time. He will be living there, after all, once they’re married.  
  
‘Although I warn you I may be reading. Or attending to customers, of course.’  
  
‘Of course.’ Crowley says, smirking, although actually, much like his opening hours, Aziraphale’s attitude to customers is erratic rather than consistently bad.  
  
Because if he likes someone, and they ask nicely, Aziraphale will go above and beyond to find just the right thing. Crowley has even seen him invent on-the-spot discounts, muttering as if to himself, ‘Oh goodness, this has been on the shelf ten years now. I usually knock a bit off after five’ or ‘That must have been valued before we all went online – these things just aren’t as hard to get hold of now’, and so on.  
  
On the other hand there are books that live behind glass and are simply Not For Sale, and customers who want what he calls ‘books by the yard’ that he simply will not sell to.  
  
He has also recently started telling people who come in less than 20 minutes before the hour on the days he is meeting Crowley for lunch, ‘This store will be closing at 1pm sharp, I’m afraid.’ But what with being the reason Aziraphale closes so punctually, Crowley isn’t in the shop to witness that.  
  
Isn’t there as much as Aziraphale would be happy to have him in fact, which does make the book dealer slightly worried that Crowley is still very used to having his own space, and may find it a strain when he moves in. He decides he can only try to make Crowley as comfortable as possible, sectioning off the area upstairs with a folding lacquer screen and a comfy chair or a small sofa, so he can watch television by himself if he wishes.  
  
Mostly though Crowley sits on the worn leather sofa downstairs and plays with his laptop, coming up with all different (and many deliberately absurd) designs for Aziraphale’s kitchen.  
  
He’s also, now he’s been allowed into Aziraphale’s bedroom, suggested he either bring his bed, or they buy a new one.  
  
It’s those kinds of conversations, talk of sharing a bed, that send Aziraphale into a little bit of a tailspin. Because married couples do normally share a bed of course, and unless one of them wants to sleep in the bath or the bookshop there really is no other choice, and it’s not that Aziraphale doesn’t find the idea appealing..  
  
Quite the opposite in fact, and therefore rather daunting. After all they haven’t come together through any admission of mutual attraction. It’s sort of a business arrangement and (Aziraphale is pleased to think) a quickly building friendship.  
  
They have shared hugs, meals, an umbrella in the rain, and now a very sweet peck on the cheek. Which was lovely, but not more than Crowley could quite comfortably give his mother.  
  
Where sexuality fits into the picture Aziraphale isn’t sure. He’d very much got out of the habit of even thinking of himself as a sexual being (unless reading about it counts, and he's moved those books off his bedside table now).  
  
Objectively speaking he know he’s.. cuddly, middle aged. Beige. And up until recently, lonely almost without realising. Numb with it.  
  
Now he feels like he’s waking up.  
  
He wishes Crowley were here. When Crowley is actually present - making Aziraphale laugh, smiling at Aziraphale’s jokes, encouraging him to eat another bloody praline if he wants one – he doesn’t fret about all this. Doesn’t worry about how Crowley, still objectively speaking, is _not_ beige.  
  
Is – not to put too fine a point on it – sexually attractive. Specifically sexually attractive to Aziraphale, whose libido seems to be coming out of dormancy along with his joie de vivre.  
  
He can’t help thinking he ought to mention that small fact if they’ll be sharing a bed.  
  
Or is he, he wonders, being ridiculous? They’ve both left that option open after all, and Aziraphale would want to marry Crowley either way. They suit, in their mismatched fashion, and he absolutely cannot imagine marrying anyone else now. He likes being able to call Crowley his fiancé and apologise for him and have him pop into the shop after hours, even if it is rather less often than Aziraphale would like.  
  
He even enjoyed the short interview at the registrars, although the lifts in the building had been something of a puzzle, only stopping at certain floors. Crowley had positively growled when the indicator board had shown that a second one had whizzed straight from a floor above them to two floors below without stopping, and Aziraphale had found himself smiling for no real reason at all, and had suggested they take the stairs.

The next thing to plan, of course, is clothes, but Crowley isn't so keen.

‘We’ve picked out some lovely flowers.' Aziraphale says at last. 'Don’t you want to live up to them?’  
  
‘I've told you. I look terrible in a suit. Like an exclamation mark moonlighting as an undertaker.’  
  
‘Well perhaps not a black suit then. A nice.. charcoal.’  
  
‘Charcoal is the same as black.’  
  
‘Yes I know. I was going to say dove grey but you looked at me and I chickened out.’  
  
His expression makes Crowley soft. Soppy.  
  
Sod it, he thinks, who cares.  
  
‘You’d look nice in dove grey,’ He says. ‘Bring out your eyes.’  
  
‘Oh, do you think so?’ Aziraphale’s pleased. Preening. His cheeks go all plump and peachy as he smiles.  
  
He is a fucking dove, or as near as. Crowley is already learning he can’t say no to that face.  
  
Urgh.  
  
Looks like they’re going suit shopping then.  
  
‘It’s too close to the wedding to get anything bespoke of course.’ Aziraphale murmurs, just 14 hours later, as they turn off Piccadilly to get away from the crowds.  
  
Even with the detour it’s quicker to walk.  
  
Crowley is still surprised by these quieter streets, had mostly sped from place to place by taxi or tube until Aziraphale had led him down all sort of places he never even knew were there. Shortcuts and longer strolls, but nice ones that take in funny little mews and green squares. Aziraphale scatters snippets of history from his reading into his conversation sometimes, peopling the streets with the famous of their day. Crowley occasionally throws a comment about a building – still extent or not – into the mix, and why it would contravene planning regs these days or how you can see it was residential but it’s been converted for offices now.  
  
The tailor’s though is quite clearly a built for purpose shop in a small row of other shops with the same big glass window at the front and the same recessed door up a short staircase.  
  
Completely new information is that Aziraphale likes dressing up. He admits to rarely buying new clothes but he thoroughly enjoys trying things on. Twice Crowley catches himself with the most ridiculously indulgent smile on his face and finds himself saying inane things like ‘do a twirl’.  
  
‘Now you’re being silly.’  
  
Crowley, on the other hand likes new things, up to date things, but he doesn’t really enjoy the process of getting them. Shops like this make him squirmy, still. Even being allowed to clown about slightly - trying on a lilac coloured top hat he has no intention of wearing - doesn’t put him fully at ease.  
  
Nor does the shop assistant, Marcus, who has come over to help and chatters so charmingly and meaninglessly with both of them, drawing them out and offering congratulations.  
  
‘And so sensible not to try and match. I never think that works unless the happy couple are practically twins. Physically I mean, obviously, I don’t mean actual twins..’ moving round and picking out as he talks this soothing stream of nonsense, queuing up things for Crowley to try.  
  
In the end it’s a very dark tweed, a brown with a subtle red in the weave, which Crowley returns to a second time so that Marcus can check how it hangs, suddenly entirely professional and matter of fact.  
  
‘Too much space here,’ he pinches the fabric so show where he means, ‘and here. Shoulders back please sir, just while I stick a couple of pins in. When did you say the wedding was?’  
  
‘Two weeks now.’ Aziraphale tells him.  
  
‘Oh, we’ll have it ready long before that.’ He unbuttons the jacket and slides it very carefully down Crowley’s arms before arranging it carefully on some kind of stand with a coat hanger arrangement at the top.  
  
There is a brief squabble about who will pay for it – Crowley feels it’s his suit, so he should pay for it, Aziraphale that he made Crowley get it so he should buy it.

Marcus privately thinks that for two people who are going to be sharing everything in a fortnight’s time they’re being just a nadge ridiculous, but keeps his opinions to himself and his face poker straight. At least they’re not each expecting the other to pay. It really is very, very awkward when that happens.  
  
‘And I have an account here so it would be much easier to put it on that..’ Aziraphale finishes up.  
  
Crowley folds, as graciously as he can, and Marcus comes to life again as he makes a note on what looks like an iPad and confirms Aziraphale’s telephone number before congratulating them again as they leave. There is someone sniffing round the ties who clearly needs attending to.  
  
‘Thank you gentlemen. Goodbye.’  
  
‘Not a gentleman.’ Crowley mutters as the door swings closed behind them. The whole thing has put him a bit out of sorts. Like he’s got an itch or something.  
  
Aziraphale tries to help.  
  
‘The suit will look rather nice, I think.’  
  
‘Yeah it’s a nice suit. It didn’t make me look like a waiter or an undertaker or a stick of charcoal.’  
  
The ‘f’ before charcoal is slid across, devoured, elided. Crowley is uneasy. But he waits until they’ve stopped for a bite to eat (John Lewis food hall, which is rammed but on the way. So.) before he feels ready to finish what he wants to say.  
  
‘Just.. not really my sort of place, that’s all..’  
  
‘I really didn’t intend to make you uncomfortable.’  
  
‘It’s fine. ‘m getting married. Ought to make the effort.’  
  
He can’t quite explain, even to himself, but the suit is only a part of the issue. A small piece of a bigger something he needs to think about.  
  
Luc, and his mother.  
  
Luc and his mother and the wedding, specifically. Which he thought he’d got clear in his head but clearly hasn’t.  
  
It all still makes his stomach tie in knots but it’s not exactly her fault, is it? People don’t ask to have NPD.  
  
But then he doesn’t want her to throw a temperament because she’s not the prima donna on the day either. She’s always expecting something – of him or the world, he never really worked out which – then when it doesn’t arrive the insults start. The verbal punishment. The emotional blackmail.  
  
And Crowley knows he’ll get angry, start shouting back, can’t help it. Is probably only thinking about this because he wants something himself - acceptance, evidence he's important enough to her that she'll act pleased. That she'll care if he's happy.  
  
Which is just setting her up for failure isn't it?  
  
He doesn’t want to expose Aziraphale to all that. Definitely not without warning him first. Which would mean telling him how Crowley's mother rejected him thirty five – no thirty six years ago now. How he got bigger and started asking questions and that wasn't acceptable so he had to go and live with his Uncle Luc.  
  
Which he doesn't want to talk about, and no-one is going to want to hear about either. Why would they? He's an adult now. Hell, he's _middle-aged_. He should be over it.  
  
Aziraphale’s voice breaks in on his thought spiral. ‘Penny for your thoughts?’  
  
‘Not worth a penny.’  
  
‘I think we’re due a hug when we get back to the bookshop.’ Aziraphale says, pouring them both out a drop more tea and topping it up with the second tiny jug of milk he’d asked for.  
  
‘Yeah, I think you’re probably right.’

Up to four days before the wedding - suit now safely in Aziraphale's wardrobe - Crowley’s mind goes through the same identical round of thoughts too many times to count and comes to the same identical conclusion every. single. time. That realistically, it will be just him and Aziraphale and that will be fine. More than fine. Good, in fact.

Meanwhile Alex has got the witnesses lined up and Aziraphale has booked a place up in Devon for four days, easy walking distance from the sea.  
  
‘We could even hop across the Cornish border for a picnic at Tintagel, weather permitting.’ He says, tracing a finger across an old ordinance survey map of the area. A modest stack of books he wants to bring weigh down one corner. ‘And if not, then there will always be scones and clotted cream and log fires and local beer.’  
  
‘I like the sea when it’s stormy.’ Crowley says. ‘But I’m still bringing my laptop.’  
  
Not that Devon doesn’t sound good – and four days is a nice length of time, not long enough to get bored, not so short that it isn’t worth going.  
  
They’ll be sharing a room too, something they’ve only done once so far, after an evening together in front of the new TV, Aziraphale looking politely bemused whenever he glanced up from his copy of _Lulu in Hollywood_ , and eventually fetching a very nice bottle of something aged and mellow up from the cellar.  
  
‘I thought we could have a nightcap and turn in. It’s gone midnight.’  
  
Which is how Crowley knows Aziraphale wears pale yellow striped cotton pyjamas but owns a wildly flamboyant kimono with fish and fruit and flowers embroidered all over it.  
  
Crowley slept in his underwear as usual. They kept to their own pillows though. Despite being happily wedged all evening together in the two seater sofa upstairs, it was different in a bed. Crowley didn’t want to assume anything.  
  
He'd woken to the sound of someone moving between kitchen and bathroom and kitchen again.  
  
‘Ah the monster awakes.’ Aziraphale had said, poking his head round the doorframe. ‘Stay there, I’ll bring your coffee in.’  
  
‘Thanks. I don’t normally eat or drink in bed.’  
  
‘Oh, this old thing has had at least twenty years of tea spills. The occasional sweet sherry too.’ Aziraphale said blithely, disappearing again to make coffee with a tall 1970s pot and paper filter.  
  
‘Er, thanks, I think.’ Crowley had called after him. ‘We’re keeping my bed right?’  
  
‘Yes dear, we already agreed that. There’ll be toast when you’re ready for it. I could bring it in?’  
  
‘No, really no. I’ll get up.’ Crowley had already thrown the bedsheets back in his eagerness, rummaging in the one drawer he had so far for clothes.  
  
‘You know in your own way you’re quite the puritan. I like a nice breakfast in bed myself. I shall certainly be doing that in Devon. Croissants and toast and jam and orange juice and tea and..’  
  
‘..a nice brown egg in a little woolly hat.’ Crowley suggested as Aziraphale came back with the coffee.  
  
‘Certainly.’  
  
‘Bucks fizz?’  
  
‘Hmm. We could, couldn’t we? We are on our honeymoon after all.’  
  
Up to the present moment though the bed has remained at Crowley’s, awaiting professional removers, although many of the items they can shift themselves have already been found places – for example the dead end of corridor in the small flat now has a hideously heavy and expensive mirror and a kind of urn on a plinth in it.  
  
‘A tad _memento mori._ ’ Aziraphale had murmured.  
  
A small coiled snake statue sits snug in the belt of greenery, where customers may or may not be fooled into thinking it real, and a bookcase has been found for Crowley’s DVD player and discs.  
  
There is also a cleared space downstairs in anticipation of his art deco drinks cabinet, just by the door into what Aziraphale calls the pantry (a sort of corridor with a sink and kettle and tin of biscuits, and a further door down to the cellar, where the booze lives).  
  
Aziraphale, who would normally get someone in even to put a shelf up, is rather enjoying the process of shifting Crowley’s belongings in dribs and drabs. More correctly, he knows he’s enjoying showing off how strong he is. Quite absurd of him of course, but Crowley is such a lovely fashionable string bean and it’s rather fun to be able to say, ‘Leave that, I’ll get it.’  
  
Then there are all the small things to be packed – kitchen utensils and electric razor and at least six open bottles of aftershave. Secateurs and a chessboard and an architect’s lamp and – most exciting to Aziraphale’s magpie heart – a large tin of pencils and six sketchbooks.  
  
‘Are these yours?’  
  
‘Yeah. Not very exciting. Mostly buildings. Bit of landscape. I buy them on a whim, when I’m at a loose end, and then I forget to carry them about.’  
  
There’s nothing Aziraphale recognises particularly. A row of Georgian houses, precise, almost as if they’d been etched. Old-fashioned in the detail of the railings and steps. An elevated view of what looks like a half built shopping centre, perhaps imagined, perhaps drawn from a taller building, and a villa constructed around a central atrium with a water tank in the middle.  
  
‘Is this Roman?’  
  
‘Er, yeah. I was in Pompeii. Ages ago now. 2006? Something like that.’  
  
A railway viaduct. A triumphal arch.  
  
And nothing else. The book ends there. The others are much the same. Public fountains, shop facades, a mountain, the odd castle, and then lots of blank space.  
  
‘We probably don’t need them all..’  
  
‘Oh they’ll hardly take up much room.’ Aziraphale says firmly.  
  
Three days later, the day before the wedding, Crowley tucks one away in his suitcase. Just in case the laptop gets boring.

The actual wedding, after everything, is only memorable to Crowley for their first, proper (if extremely chaste) kiss.

There’s a moment of hyperawareness – that Aziraphale’s lips are soft and his aftershave or whatever it is has a hint of fern in it. That he closes his eyes when their lips meet, and his fingers bunch up in Crowley’s lapels as if to hold him still a moment, and then smooth them neatly again.

Crowley’s hands skim Aziraphale’s waist without really landing.  
  
Then, within a bare second or two, the kiss is over and the two witnesses politely applauding, and Aziraphale looks pleased and rather shy.  
  
Later he will confess that it felt a little strange kissing in front of these two young people, but both seem happy for them in a low key fashion. Kay, whose weekday job is waitressing, even offers to take a few pics on Crowley’s phone.  
  
True to Alex’s word the fact their witnesses didn’t really know them hadn’t mattered in a legal sense at all.  
  
‘If there was a question of residency or forced marriage I reckon they’d ask us all a few questions but, I mean..’ The other witness, Sanjay, doesn’t even bother to finish his sentence.  
  
‘Yes. I suppose we’re – I believe the term is ‘privileged’ - in that sense.’ Aziraphale glances at Crowley to check he’s got the terminology right, but Crowley is hanging back slightly and seems to be inspecting the balustrade of the sturdy Victorian porch as they leave. ‘So.. um.’

Crowley catches up. ‘I was thinking we should get a drink to celebrate. Do either of you fancy joining us?’  
  
Aziraphale looks startled – he’s unfailingly polite when he knows the rules but flounders a bit when he has to improvise, and didn’t anticipate this bit.  
  
He brightens up almost immediately though.  
  
‘I know just the place.’  
  
Which is how they end up on a rooftop terrace with a bottle of pink champagne – terribly cliched but the pop of the cork feels like a celebration – and a three-tiered cake stand of finger sandwiches and petit fours.  
  
Crowley pours and settles back to admire the band on his finger – plain white gold to match Aziraphale’s plain rose gold one.  
  
‘Well.’ He says. ‘We’ve done it now. You’re stuck with me.’ Then he reaches into his pocket and takes the confetti he had found in a shallow drift on the balustrade, scattered from some previous ceremony, and sprinkles it over Aziraphale’s curly head to illustrate.  
  
‘Oh you fiend.’ Aziraphale complains, without any heat at all. ‘However shall I cope.’


	7. The Bubbles in the Cider

I’m so happy, Aziraphale thinks on the train journey down. So absurdly happy.  
  
Fizzing with it, completely unable to concentrate on _Jamaica Inn._  
  
Instead he looks out of the train window at the countryside whipping past. They’re running parallel to a canal at the moment, crossing it from time to time so that it pops up first on one side and then the other. Occasionally they flash past a building or a boat or, more often, dog walkers.  
  
It all looks very lush and verdant.  
  
Inside the train Crowley is playing some ridiculous game on his phone. He’s wearing headphones but every so often a prolonged shattering noise escapes anyway, like successive glass cabinets full of lead crystal tipping over and smashing, and Crowley will look pleased with himself.  
  
Aziraphale has no idea what the crashing noise is. The appearance of the game is more reminiscent of the plastic toys he remembers finding in cheap Christmas crackers - except instead of having to slide pieces around to make one large picture the idea seems to be to line up different boiled sweets.  
  
Crowley frowns slightly now, as if working out an abstruse problem, and then moves his thumb over the screen in short bursts, his other hand holding his chin up, elbow on the table.  
  
Then, apparently happy with the result, he sets the phone down and pulls one headphone plug out by tugging on the wire.  
  
‘You ok angel?’  
  
Oh. Aziraphale hadn’t realised he was staring.  
  
‘Yes of course. Can’t seem to focus, that’s all.’  
  
‘We could listen to some music. Here, you take this one.’ Crowley sprawls further forwards so that Aziraphale can comfortably put the dangling earphone plug in his ear and see the phone screen as Crowley tilts it towards him. ‘Right, playlists. What do you fancy?’  
  
Crowley hasn’t taken a long train journey in years – normally he drives, even if it means hiring a car, and of course in London there’s the tube – but going this way meant there was no risk of them getting lost in unfamiliar roads in the dark.  
  
He’s feeling pleasantly relaxed actually, now they’re actually married and properly on their way, (suitcases packed the night beforehand at Aziraphale’s suggestion, so all they had to do was pick them up and take a taxi to Paddington), and they’ve had coffee (Aziraphale brought a thermos because – he says - the coffee on trains is always execrable) and some shortbread biscuits (in a tin with a tartan pattern on it) and Crowley had the fun of dipping the latter in the former and causing a look of mild horror to flit across Aziraphale’s face. Then they did the crossword, and now they are sharing a set of headphones like a pair of 14 year olds. All in all he has never felt less cool or less worried about it.  
  
The journey is flying past surprising fast.

The hotel is clean and cosy rather than flash, although Crowley can see someone has spent good money to make their room a lighter and brighter version of late Victorian: Turkish tiles around the fireplace, blue chintz fabrics, wallpaper with a recurring print of ferns. Aziraphale’s books fit right in, ranged across the cast iron mantelpiece, as does his little folding clock by the brass bed.  
  
There’s a small fridge under the desk so it’s not intrusive. Aziraphale stashes the pint of milk they bought on the way and puts the tiny kettle on for a quick cuppa before they stroll down to the sea. He positively beams when he finds there’s an actual bath in the bathroom, as opposed to just a shower, and chuckles when Crowley lay sideways across the bed with his head off one end, watching Aziraphale spoon sugar and shake out clothes and set Crowley’s laptop neatly in the centre of the desk for him, all upside down.  
  
‘Ridiculous creature.’ He says affectionately. ‘Here, drink your tea.’  
  
Crowley rolls off the bed to his feet. Sometimes he has a boneless sort of grace, a distracting sway to his hips, and at others he seems to be nothing but bones, long limbs and long fingers, hooking through the tiny cup handle. Aziraphale wonders how sharp his hips are, what they’d feel like under his palms.  
  
They still haven’t talked about that, but they seem to be edging their way closer to some sort of physical intimacy.  
  
‘Can I..’ Crowley tips his glasses up and leans forward to snatch a kiss - very brief and careful, since both of them are holding hot drinks - and Aziraphale dimples, losing his train of thought.  
  
‘Oh. Yes, of course.’  
  
He’s lovely when he’s happy, Crowley thinks, a curl-headed aristocrat from one of those ridiculous and slightly naughty Fragonard paintings. Soft pink cheeks and bright eyes that glance shyly at Crowley while he hides his smile in his teacup (they’re blue willow pattern. It’s all very boutique and silly).  
  
He’s practically glowing after their long weed and salt-scented walk along the beach with the tide out, insistent on going for a paddle (Crowley is equally insistent that he will hold Aziraphale’s shoes and socks for him, and stand well out of the way of the incoming tide). It works them up an appetite for dinner in the pub, local cider gently fizzing, and salmon and fried potatoes hot and (Aziraphale’s word) scrummy.  
  
His trousers are damp below the knee but he obviously doesn’t care, and Crowley is smiling stupidly, he’s sure, can barely be arsed to try and hide it when Aziraphale looks at him.  
  
Everything is soaked in this same fizzy feeling. Like the bubbles in the cider have got into his head, into the air, into the sky outside.  
  
He actually catches himself thinking ridiculous things like _let’s stay here forever_ , but of course he doesn’t mean it – Aziraphale would seriously miss his shop, and Crowley does actually enjoy trying to make substandard accommodation at least a bit livable in.  
  
Even the rows with project managers who want to cut corners are occasionally therapeutic. He supposes he doesn’t totally hate and despise his colleagues either..  
  
It's just that this moment in time, it’s a good moment. With Aziraphale picking peach crumble for afters and Crowley a tiny cream puff thing that he plans to let Aziraphale steal half of.  
  
Then later.. well the brass bed creaks a little bit, as he found out when he was sprawled on it earlier, but probably, _probably_ , they’re just going to cuddle up anyway. He’s not sure if there will be more, or when, ever, but it's not an issue. It's almost nice not to have the desperate clutching and panting and panic to prove to himself that he wants someone else and they want him, using sex like a sort of no more nails and ego boost all in one.  
  
Instead, with Aziraphale, it could just be a.. very welcome cherry on the top.  
  
Or a juicy, tempting apple.

‘I’ll just have a quick wash and brush up and perhaps read for a bit in bed if that’s alright?’ Aziraphale says as soon as they get back, picking up his wash bag – leather, monogrammed, probably expensive – and his pyjamas. Crowley nods and opens up his laptop, ignoring the slight disappointment that Aziraphale would rather read than curl up with him.  
  
Aziraphale, in turn, comes out of the bathroom a little disappointed that Crowley seems quite happy sitting over by the desk with his computer rather than joining him in the bed.  
  
Still he supposes it is rather early, even if it has been a long day. He snuggles down with the du Maurier instead, lets himself be sucked into a world of harsh landscapes and wicked men, shipwrecks and stolen horses.  
  
The next time he looks at the clock an hour has passed and Crowley is asking if he wants another cup of tea.  
  
‘Not for me, I think.’ He sets his book down and yawns behind his hand. ‘I’m quite tired. It’s the sea air.’  
  
‘I’ll get changed and join you then.’  
  
Aziraphale tries not to wriggle excitedly at the thought of Crowley in bed with him again – he's convinced it’s a ridiculous habit for a man of his age, although he can’t seem to break it – and slides down under the covers to watch as Crowley closes his laptop and goes into the bathroom.  
  
‘Do you realise,’ he says cautiously, hopefully, when Crowley has come out again in a dark grey sleep suit made of some clingy material that does marvellous things for his legs. ‘that we haven’t actually met our quota for cuddling today?’  
  
‘Well that won’t do. Here.’ He lets Aziraphale flick the light off then pulls him snugly into the curve of his arm, lips brushing against his forehead.  
  
They’re at the back of the hotel. Its dark in the room in a way it never is in London, and perhaps that makes it easier to press an impulsive kiss against Crowley’s jaw, and then, as his head moves down, his mouth.  
  
It turns slow and clinging as Crowley pulls him closer. Aziraphale counters by slipping his own arm around Crowley’s waist.  
  
It’s more intimate than sexual, but it’s moving that way, Crowley’s palm sliding up under the back of Aziraphale’s shirt, finding bare skin, soft and warm under the press of his fingers, Aziraphale clutching the silky material of Crowley’s top as Crowley’s calf brushes against his own.  
  
Crowley’s skin feels hot and tight, urging him to tug his shirt off. Aziraphale’s too, ideally, so they can be skin to skin. The thought makes his hips twitch forwards, thrusting automatically against Aziraphale’s thigh.  
  
And Aziraphale freezes immediately.  
  
‘Sorry.’ He murmurs, loosening his hold on Crowley and drawing back. ‘It’s.. actually I’m not sure what it is. Perhaps just that it’s been rather a long time.’  
  
Crowley slips his own hand free of Aziraphale’s cotton shirt and pets him briefly over it instead.  
  
‘It’s alright Angel, there’s no rush.’  
  
‘I don’t want you to think I’m not attracted to you. I am. It’s just.. nerves.’ He sighs, disappointed in himself. ‘Perhaps we should just go to sleep.’

Aziraphale wakes first the next morning, startled by the loudness of birdsong – he’s used to the racket of home going revellers and street cleaning, but a dawn chorus of a thousand musical twitters and the yawling of seagulls is surprisingly difficult to sleep through. He blinks himself fully awake and pulls his book down off the bedside cabinet to read without disturbing Crowley, still a deliciously warm weight all along his back.

His mind is just turning to fresh croissants and filter coffee and eggs on toast when Crowley makes a vague snuffling noise and unpeels himself from where he’s curled around Aziraphale’s body.

‘Oh you’re awake. Good morning.’

’Mornin’ angel.’ Crowley sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed, stretching until his pyjama top rides up, revealing a knobbly spine Aziraphale immediately wants to press a kiss to but dithers over, wondering if that might be considered ‘mixed messages’ after his reaction last night.

By the time he’s finished hesitating Crowley has sashayed his way into the bathroom and shut the door.

Oh well, in the absence of intimacy there’s always tea. He makes Crowley one too, now he knows how he likes it. They talked about visiting Tintagel today if they could be bothered to get up, and it’s still early enough that they can enjoy a leisurely breakfast and catch the bus over and back.

‘Bus?’ Crowley protests, when Aziraphale suggests this to him before his own shower. ‘Oh all right then.’ The truth is if he can’t drive himself it’s all the same really. Bus or taxi.

It’s actually quite a nice trip, with glimpses of the sea they probably wouldn’t have got sitting low down in a car and lots of little places that look terribly picturesque, with stacked slate walls and the odd thatched roof, but which Aziraphale isn’t sure he’d want to live in.

‘Bet you can see the stars properly out here though.’ Crowley says. The sky seems huge, fields stretching away to distance-blurred hills.

‘We should take a little stroll away from the main road tonight and check. Perhaps bring a flask of something.’

‘Bottle of wine for a picnic under the stars surely?’

‘A flask of wine, a book of verse and thou..’ Aziraphale quotes, then blushes, turning to look out of the window again.

There’s a woman sitting in the window seat parallel who has glanced over out of the corner of her eye at least three times now, possibly disapproving or possibly just trying to get the measure of them. When she does it again Crowley takes Aziraphale’s hand on principle, and is rewarded with a short squeeze from Aziraphale and an ‘I knew it’ expression crossing the woman’s face as she turns to look out of the window instead.

It’s not antagonistic, but he still isn’t sure he likes it. Most people barely notice him in London, regardless of whose hand he’s holding or whatever mad thing he does with his clothes and hair, and he takes Aziraphale’s point about not necessarily wanting to live in a small place.

Tintagel itself though is swarming with tourists, mostly young families or what Crowley thinks of as natural English Heritage members – people old enough to be retired but not so old they can’t walk long distances or stand in a queue for approximately a billion years to get scones and jam afterwards.

The castle ruins are big enough for the swarm to spread out even before they get to the new bridge, which Crowley is quite struck with in itself, and Aziraphale has to admit is rather clever. The view is marvellous.

He tries to soak up the ambience – not easy with small children scrambling about and at least one tour guide droning on – while Crowley inspects the walls to try and work out where the upper floors might have been. There are definitely gaps that look as though they’re there to support beams but that could have been scaffold rather than structural.

‘Do you think King Arthur really existed?’ He says at last, wandering up on Aziraphale's left.

‘A King Arthur certainly, although whether he was King of the whole of Britain or Wales or Cornwall I wouldn’t like to say.’ Aziraphale admits. ‘I suspect him of being a figure around which legends and histories accumulated which originally belonged to others. As for where he actually had his castle – well here is as good a place as any, don’t you think? Quite magical.’

‘I always thought Morgan le Fay got a raw deal in those stories.’

‘Oh now _she_ I think is an older legend than Arthur.’ Aziraphale sighs. ‘Sometimes I think about all the stories we’ve lost, just because of time and accident and repression. Or even just because they were never written down. It seems a shame.’ He brightens. ‘and then I look around my shop and realise that people are making new stories all the time.’

In the end, between lunch, more wanderings around other beauty spots, a clamber over rocks, cream tea to fortify themselves, and a drink or two in a local pub with absurdly low ceilings, they get completely out of synch with the bus and opt to have dinner in the pub as well, taking a taxi back to the hotel late in the evening.

It’s just on nine o’clock when they’re dropped off. Full night at this time of the year

‘Do you want to go straight in or have a wander?’ Aziraphale asks.

‘Wander where?’

‘Towards the sea a bit.’

‘Might as well.’

They don’t take the road but the path they followed the day before, running up the side of the hotel and then striking across a green space with the bus shelter in before it cuts across fenced-in fields to the sea.

It gets dark much faster than they expect, and Crowley holds a hand out for Aziraphale to take, wiggling his fingers. Aziraphale glances behind himself as soon as he does it and is comforted that they will be able to see the way back much more easily, because that’s where all the lights are.

Unfortunately when he turns away from the lights he can hardly see anything at all for a few moments.

At a stile over a flint wall they decide to pause, perching or leaning on the wooden cross post. There’s just enough ambient light for Aziraphale to see that Crowley has taken off his glasses. When they kiss they have to find each other’s chins and cheeks with their fingers, coming together cautiously, tilting and sliding into place.

They don’t worry too much about following the path all the way to the sea. It’s pleasant here, wrapped up in each other, admiring the night sky and listening to the waves.

When they part, finally, they turn their full attention to the constellations. Crowley used to know every one, but he’s rusty. Aziraphale can provide the odd snippet about the legendary Pegasus or why the dog star is called the dog star. Mostly though they just look, and hold hands, and trace their own imaginary animals.

They’ve been there for some time before they’re interrupted by sleek shape, running low to the ground. A brief impression of white and dark patches and the jingle of a chain collar – a border collie perhaps – and then someone looming up on the other side of the flint wall.

‘scuse me lads.’ They’re hardly lads but Aziraphale appreciates that the visibility isn’t good. They move to the side, Crowley hopping his leggy self down off the stile to let the man pass.

‘Grazie molto.’ He says, laboriously, as if he’s practised it for a week’s holiday every year and then put it in mothballs and forgot it all over again. Or as if his teenage grandchild taught him and he’s worried he’ll forget it before the next time he sees her if he doesn’t practice.

‘Niente.’ Crowley replies easily.

‘Nice night.’ The man observes. Somehow it’s obvious there’s a question in it.

‘Lovely,’ Aziraphale agrees. ‘we came out to see the stars.’

‘Hmm.’ A low Devonshire noise of agreement and curiosity. The dog comes back to sniff at Crowley’s ankles and he rubs it’s ears, leaving Aziraphale to do the talking.

‘You can’t see them properly in London.’ Aziraphale explains, since further explanation seems to be expected.

‘Ah.’ A sound of comprehension now. ‘Well you’ve picked the best night for it. It’ll be bucketing down tomorrow.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nice and Accurate note: The border with Devon is further away from Tintagel than I've depicted it in this fic.


End file.
